Chinese Painters: A Critical Study (Illustrated Edition) (Dodo Press)

Raphael Petrucci (1872-1917) was a writer on sociology, biology, scientific engineer and one of the ablest and most devoted students and interpreters of the art of the Far East. He was born to the great and ancient Sienese family of the Petrucci, to a French mother, so he spent much of his earlier life in Paris. Then he settled down in Brussels and got married to one of the daughters of the painter Verwee. When war broke out he was on his way home from Italy where he was taking part in a big engineering project and he only got out of Switzerland into France by the last train which left Basle. He came to England for a time, looking after a number of Belgian refugees, including some very distinguished artists. At the end of 1914 he was engaged by the India office to do some valuable work in London on the collection of Chinese and Tibetan paintings brought back from Tunhuang by Sir Aurel Stein and in 1912 he published Les Peintres Chinois: Etude Critique (Chinese Painters: A Critical Study) (translated by Frances Seaver). He also wrote a philosophic novel, La Porte de l'Amour et de la Mort, which has run through several editions (1910).